At CRPE, our previous finance research centered on how funding systems could support the growth of charter schools and portfolio-style governance, with a strong emphasis on equity, transparency, and flexibility in resource allocation. We examined how traditional formulas often disadvantaged schools of choice and studied weighted or student-based funding models that might better match dollars to student needs.
Today, our focus has shifted to how education finance can help schools recover and adapt in the face of disruption. We study how pandemic-era funding was used, what lessons districts learned, and how the expiration of those funds creates new fiscal challenges. We also examine how shifting federal priorities—such as efforts to scale back or restructure education funding—affect schools’ capacity to innovate, sustain supports, and equitably serve all students. Across this evolution, our commitment remains the same: to understand how funding systems can be designed to meet student needs while enabling schools to respond to change.
This paper explores the relative importance of specific policy components on post-secondary outcomes, and how such policies impact students with different aspirations or economic and ethnic backgrounds.
In this brief, Marguerite Roza explains why K-12 school districts that lay off personnel according to seniority cause disproportionate damage to their programs and students than if layoffs were determined on a seniority-neutral basis.
This report is the conclusion of an extensive six-year national study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The authors criticize school finance systems for being outmoded and not linked to student results and offer a four-part action plan for overhauling today’s school finance systems.
This is a pre-print version of an article that was published in ASBO International’s School Business Affairs magazine. The article summarizes a five year research study that examined the linkages between how money is spent on K-12 education and whether students learn.
This paper offers empirical evidence on the size of incentives that might be needed to make teaching a relatively more attractive occupation for people with technical skills or high academic aptitude.
This paper explores the value teachers place on financial incentives and how much of a salary incentive is needed to attract new teachers to high-needs schools.
This report demonstrates in greater detail than ever before how America’s methods of school finance work against a single-minded focus on student learning.